Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the Canon RF 16mm f2.8 STM
This is a very welcome addition to the Canon RF catalog for a couple of reasons
It is one of the very rare prime lenses that has come to the platform
There's about 11 prime lenses I think that have come to the platform at this point
With only about half of those falling under $1000 and even fewer of those falling underneath $500
This happens to be one of them however and it comes right after the RF 50mm f1.8
as being I think probably the cheapest lens on the platform at $299 US
Obviously that's going to make it a very welcome addition and by the way it shares a whole lot with that RF 50mm f1.8
which we'll talk about in just a moment when we talk about the build and the design
Also very welcome however is the fact that this is a very wide focal length
and covering almost 108 degrees field of view which is quite wide
and thus gives you a really nice wide angle perspective with which
Because the lens is so compact and lightweight, easy to bring along and easy to complement other lenses
even if it probably won't be your primary focal length on most of your shooting outings
Like many of Canon's wide angle lenses however it is not without some optical flaws
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So let's talk about the build and the design of this lens. As noted it is as you can see very similar to the RF 50mm F1.8
and is within a fraction of a millimeter in all of its dimensions
And so this particular lens is 69.2mm in diameter and right over 40mm in length
and so that is 2.7 inches by 1.6 inches. Both of them also weigh very close together
This particular lens is 165 grams or 5.8 ounces while the 50mm is I believe 160 grams
And so within just a few grams of each other both of them share a 43mm front filter thread which is not a very common one
but obviously it hopes to be more common if you keep making lenses that share that particular filter size
It also is identical in terms of the outer housing and the build, the accent rings
and the fact that rather than having an AF-MS switch it uses a control slash focus switch that designates what the control ring is going to do
Obviously in control mode it's going to basically do anything that you assign your control ring to do on a Canon RF lens
And in focus mode it in theory is going to make that same ring become the manual focus ring
However, it is not a flawless transition. You still have to manually select manual focus somewhere else
and I would really prefer this design to be where if you're in the focus mode
that it automatically would switch to manual focus mode. Unfortunately it doesn't do that
And I will note that when it comes to the focus action it is not a delightful experience
You can get the job done but there's kind of a feeling of drag on the lens
whenever, particularly if you're making a major focus change. And so it is not the smoothest in operation
Like many of the, well basically all of Canon's non-L series lenses
this comes, well, without much of anything. It has the front and rear caps but it doesn't come with a lens hood
That will set you back an additional $35. It has no weather sealing
It comes with no case or anything like that. What you see is what you get. You get just the lens
However, it's a little more reasonable at a price point like this versus a lens that's, you know, $700 or $800
as some of Canon's lenses that fall into that same kind of category
So I'm a little more critical of them. Like the 50mm it has 7 aperture blades
which gives you a rounded aperture but when you stop down you can get a decent looking sunburst
14-pointed sunburst effect as you can see here. This also has a very close minimum focus distance
You can focus as closely as 13mm which as you can see gets you very close to your subject
and it gives you a quite high 0.26x maximum magnification. However, I will note with a wide angle lens like this
getting so close to your subject you do get some definite field curvature and so only a little bit is going to be in focus at a time
and so you're going to have to use it judiciously. At the same time, however, it is a genuinely useful thing
and gives you some high degree of magnification and some interesting shots
and the ability to defocus the background even though you have a very wide focal length
and obviously not a huge maximum aperture. So when we talk about the focus motor here
this is an SDM focus system and as already noted that comes with a bit of a drawback when it comes to the manual focus action
It's focused by wire and routed through that focus motor and because the focus motor isn't entirely smooth or incredibly fast
you end up with that kind of manual focus rate. You'll also see that focus changes during video are quite slow
and so you have a very definite transition between one subject to another
There is some focus noise during operation. Fortunately, it's not extremely loud or extremely annoying
and I can only faintly hear it during video recording so it probably won't be an issue for that
Now on a positive note, this is going to be a very excellent focal length
when it comes to doing something like vlogging, for example. This is obviously going to be an attractive option for vlogging
for a lot of reasons. The biggest one being the focal length which obviously is nice and wide
and it gives you a great focal length for being able to record even if you always have close distance away from the camera
So, as you can also see, we have good tracking of the eye and thus autofocus is able to keep up here
So the combination of the focal length and the autofocus capability makes this, I think, a natural one to use for vlogging situations
I'll also note that it does a stable job of tracking the eye and so that tends to be more of a strength for the lens
It's more major focus transitions that aren't so good and even transitioning, for example, from my hand to my eye
you can just see that it's a very definite transition not a fast transition, even though it does do a good job of picking it up
Now when it comes to, you know, ordinary operation I had no issue with focus acquisition
Canon, you know, I reviewed this on the Canon EOS R5 it has a great focus system
and I got great focus results and so even though focus isn't the smoothest
it got the job done with reasonable speed and with very good accuracy
and so at the end of the day, you know, it gets the job done much like the 50mm f1.8
it's not top tier, but, you know, it works and so I'm not going to complain too much about that
So that leads us to a discussion of the actual image quality
and so let's dive in and take a look at what is a nuanced optical performance
So we're going to start by dealing with the elephant in the room and that is that this lens is wholly dependent upon
electronic corrections, profiles to give any kind of reasonable, usable optical performance
The vignette and the distortion are extremely heavy, as you can see
and if you had to manually correct them which fortunately you're not going to have to
if you did, however, you can see that it is a non-linear type distortion
that you really can't, at least with the tools we currently have in a program like Lightroom
you really can't do a clean job because you end up with this kind of mustache pattern
Now fortunately, being a first party lens profile correction is excellent, which we'll get to in just a moment
but first of all, let's just take a look at what we've got here. This is a plus 70 to try to straighten out that
bulge of the barrel distortion which is maybe the highest figure I've ever had to dial in before
and you can see also with the vignette I'm having to max out the slider to illuminate the corners
and so this is a lens that needs a lot of correction. Now, here's a look at how we, the correction that we get
if we use the new standard profile here in Lightroom so you can see it's done a much better job with the distortion
whereas it's not, I mean, it's flawless it is certainly very acceptable at this point
and the vignette, you know, you probably might want to correct even a hair more
but overall it has done a good job. Now what's strange is that this is what I saw in the viewfinder
this is the in-camera corrected JPEG and as you can see I was obviously trying to frame
as I always do to fill the frame with this. You can see that even after correction for the raw image
there is a lot of room that is left and so this is a lens that in many ways is beneficial to see in raw
because for some reason you're going to actually end up with a much wider angle of view
Obviously Canon has left a lot of room for correction and I don't frankly know why it is correcting so much
or cropping so much in camera to give you that JPEG result
And you're going to want to really avoid putting people near the edge of the frame
as you can see here, even after the correction or maybe because of the correction
you end up with some really weird distortions and so it's something to watch for
Here with, you know, someone on the basketball court you can see, looking here, that they are really, really stretched
and even this far into the frame you can see that there is some unnatural stretching that is taking place
So if you're going to take people shots keep them towards the center of the frame and away from the edges
Every shot, for example, because I composed with, you know, the little boy
near the center of the frame, it's natural and his dad there, no problem there
You can see that the door probably has been stretched but you can get away with that with doors
Doors are far less likely to be offended than what people are
Here is the uncorrected law or an interior type space. You can definitely see all of the bulge in the line
but I will again say that the correction profile does a really nice job of straightening out those lines
and, you know, there is going to be a little bit of stretching towards the edges of the frame. For interiors, you might be able to get away with it
However, there is obviously going to be better options if your goal is to shoot interior spaces
Now when it comes to chromatic aberration there is one type of chromatic aberration that it does very well with
another that it doesn't. So in this case, longitudinal chromatic aberration which shows up before and after the point of focus
is reasonably well controlled. You can see a little bit of fringing after the point of focus
but maybe a hair before the point of focus. Nothing too bad there
That's not going to be a problem. Now, lateral chromatic aberrations are going to be a different story
And even with, you know, corrections enabled here in light room you can see that there is still some left over
fringing that is there along the edge of the frame. Now if I just go to a crop of that area
and I had clicked off that correct for lateral chromatic aberration you can see that that fringing is very, very strong
So that's obviously a weakness of the frame. Basically all of the weaknesses are near the edge of the frame
So next we'll take a look at our resolution and contrast. Now, just again to show what was originally there
this is what I saw in viewfinder when I was framing this this way. So this is the JPEG of this wall image
And so you can see how much it has been corrected and even though the light room correction profile has been used
on the wall image on the left you can see just how tightly Canon is cropping in on that
And so this is a lens that is probably considerably wider than 16mm
if you're shooting in RAW. So we're looking at the 45 megapixel Canon EOS R5
and this is out of 200% magnification, so torture testing. But you can see that this lens either passes the center of the frame
with flying colors. Very sharp, very nice contrast. Likewise, mid-frame looks very, very good
No issues there. And as I kind of move towards the corner
you can see that, you know, there is some drop-off towards the edge but sharpness is not a weakness for this lens
This is a very sharp little lens. Stopping down to f4 gives a negligible amount of improvement
in the center of the frame. If we look out at the mid-frame
it's maybe a little bit brighter and a little bit more consistent there. But if we pop down to the corner
we can see that the corners are definitely looking better. Not necessarily with a lot of additional resolution
but with some additional contrast and just a better uniformity of kind of your bright and shadow area
Stopping on down to f5.6 produces very little improvement. And moving on to f8
doesn't really show much improvement there either. And so you're going to achieve the max performance
somewhere around f4 to f5.6 and you can only, if you want to stop down further
you can use it more for depth of field and the need for increased sharpness
Our minimum aperture is f22 but as you can see in the f2.8 to f22 comparison
there's definitely a lot of contrast that is lost an acuity that is lost due to diffraction
on a high resolution sensor like the EF R5. Now our minimum focus distance is only 13 centimeters
here or 5.1 inches and as you can see that means you're pretty much on top of your subject
However you do get a nice high magnification figure of 0.26 times
and while you can see some field curvature here you can also see that performance is actually quite good
up close with good contrast and good resolution at least in the center of the frame
And that does, is usable I should say out in real world results
and as you can see here you know there's nice detail here in the center
of the marigold blossom and so plenty of resolution there. You know the background isn't like blown away
but this is a 16 millimeter wide angle lens. Likewise in this image
where there's a little bit more room to the background we can see that we've got good detail on the mushroom
which is the subject and as we look up here you know the bokeh is you know fairly good
you can definitely see some kind of odd deformation towards edges of the frame
but pretty circular over most of it with only a little bit of fringing. The transition zone is fairly busy however
and you know this is not going to be a lens that you're using to blow away backgrounds anyway
And so under the circumstance you know that's certainly a usable addition to the lens
Now I found in real world landscape type use that I was perfectly happy with the lens
It provided a lot of punch in detail rich colors and you can see that you know the center is sharper
than what the edges are here but overall I mean that is a nice looking image
and it is on a very high resolution body and even in low light situations
like I was very happy with this it was a painless lens to use
and I had a lot of fun using it. Here's another landscape image
where you can see that colors are nice and rich the detail throughout the frame is really excellent
even on a high resolution body and so I think that that is the area
that this lens excels for. Another area of real strength is flare resistance
and you can see here wide open that there's very there's basically nothing to point to in the image frame
even though very bright sun is in the frame and if I pan back and forth wide open
you can see just a tiniest little flare or ghosting pattern nothing to be concerned about
If you stop on down to f11 there's just a little bit more of ghosting artifacts
but again completely unobtrusive and again panning back and forth in video
you can see that there is very very little to be concerned about
Finally a quick word on astrophotography obviously this is going to be interesting for astro
because of the wide focal length and you know reasonably wide maximum aperture
so as you can see you certainly can pick up a lot of star points
and in the center of the frame your things will clump good
as we move off towards the edge of the frame there is a little bit of striking
you can see some comb on the side now I did note when I caught some brighter stars like here
we got a little bit more of comb effect as you can see here but at the end of the day
you can certainly use it for this purpose I would say that maybe the most challenging thing
is going to be the fact that that little heavy vignette in the correction
you may have to tweak that a little bit because I find that on an all night shot
I just tended to over correct and so I had to play with that too and even so I still don't feel like I have the most
even of illumination however I can't determine whether that's due to some environmental conditions
you know you can see some of the kind of cosmic dust of the Milky Way here it's impacting that
but I did shoot multiple images and I felt like I had to play with vignette
to try to get it you know somewhat appropriate and so anyway I certainly I think it's usable
particularly if you're on a tight budget and have no options but it wouldn't be a top pick in line either
so at the end of the day there are obviously some real strengths and some real weaknesses for this lens
you're definitely going to be relying on the optical corrections I shouldn't say optical corrections
but digital corrections that come either in camera or in post box and software
to make this a usable focal length and as noted you're probably going to want to avoid
putting people near the edges of the frame for pretty obvious reasons
but for landscape purposes it produced beautiful images and highly detailed great contrast
and it had no problem dealing with the 4-5 megapixel sensor of the EOS R5
and so I think for most practical purposes it's going to be a very useful lens
I wouldn't necessarily reach for it for interiors even though it does correct reasonably well
but certainly for landscapes and some of the other type things you do with wide angle lenses
I think it's going to be very useful and even for environmental portraiture as long as you compose with your subject
nowhere near the very edges of the frame this would be just fine
but at the end of the day this is despite its flaws going to be a very intriguing lens why
because it's a great price point and it's a great size and that means that it's going to be easy to bring along
and it's already on my personal wish list even though I don't love the optical flaws
but there are very few basically no lenses to compare with this particular lens
if you want a wide angle prime that is lightweight and easy to bring along
so that makes it a desirable lens even if, you know, you recognize
it comes with a little bit of baggage isn't that true of so many things in life
still more information you can check out my text review which covers everything in detail
there's an image gallery there if you'd like to look at the photos that I've personally taken
during my review period and of course there's buying links if you'd like to pick one up for yourself
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have a great day and let the light in you